


Leaves at the Station

by PoltergeistDave



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27263653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoltergeistDave/pseuds/PoltergeistDave
Summary: Dumbledore falls from the Astronomy Tower and awakes in a new land.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Leaves at the Station

“Severus” he croaks out. His chest constricts and he can barely move enough air through his lungs for the words. The only other man who knows his plans, his plots, stands just feet away from him, their eyes locked. “Severus, please,” he begs, his arm too weak to save him from an undignified death, his feet skidding on the slick stone, his mind awhirl with recollections of those terrible events so long ago, brought on by a cursed potion and an unhallowed place.

Severus stares at him, wand outstretched, playing the part of servant turned against master, disgust and revulsion etched into his face - though those emotions are likely authentic, considering how he has sacrificed Harry for the cause, has led Severus on through the years.

The words are spoken, the mercy speeds towards him, and he is blasted backwards, limp and imprisoned in his body, blown like a leaf in the wind away from the tower beneath the hateful skull that hangs in the air. The force of the curse twists his body to face the ground as he plummets downward, unable to close his eyes as his body lands and he is consigned to blessed oblivion.

He awakes into the blinding white of eternity, the infinite stretching out in all directions, no limits in this new land except what his mind imposes. He is naked as the day he was born, but a pile of clothes sits but a few feet away. Time stretches and contracts as he walks to the heap, each step taking both a second and an hour; each inhalation both laboured (his last gasp) and free (his first breath.)

His first inkling that there is something more to this bleak landscape is the sudden shift in perception. What is the floor becomes the air; what is the unceasing horizon becomes cluttered with walls, suggested by the hint of shadows.

To his eyes, this illusion of reality is worse than the raw firmament that he had become accustomed to. His memories are clear of this place, being young, running round this house, growing older, this place becoming his prison, the source of his greatest shame, but also the place where he had learned how he should act and conduct himself.

He casts his mind back, a clear picture of its forefront of grimy streets shaded by rotting trees; where silence reigned and yet laughter and warmth seemed within reach inside the dull façades of buildings. Already the length of time he had spent here felt interminable; a reminder of his callowness in youth brought to vivid essence. He had been young, innocent; free of the burdens and responsibilities that would weigh him down. The cottage was inviting and warm, a new beginning. They had run in the spring and summer, kicked the piles of leaves in the autumn, made the snow fly in winter. But beginnings lead to endings, and endings strike quickly. His father was gone, never to return.

They’d learnt from their mother after that; learning meaning discovering what could be taken and gleaned from fools and their flapping lips, as long as an ear was left open and inviting. They learned to have an ear open, to pause invitingly so that they might trap the unwary in a web of their own words. Their mother’s usually-closed lips would part, and perfect words would spill forth. That mouth, pursed tightly, as though by halting the noise she made the noise of others would halt too. 

Then he left, and he was glad to be free of the oppressive place; so cold and comforting, so hidden and bare, so free of charm and happiness and love. He went away and planned to stay away, for early in his life he’d learnt how honeyed words were often poisonous, and how a perfect and silky voice hid lies and deceit.

He left for Hogwarts, for the magic castle in the hills, where he could hide the shame of his family, not just his father, locked in cold and humourless stone for the crime of love and hate, but also his sister, imprisoned in grimy walls, the price of pride.

He span himself a web of honour and justice, to escape the icy embrace of his father and the cruel talons of his mother. And just as he reached the end of the tunnel, where freedom and glory and renown might one day be his, a foundation of his world broke and he was left alone.

His mother died, taken from him by his sister, on to the next great adventure, and he was forced to return, cast down from the lofty heights of his achievements to earth, to take care of his damaged sister.

A caretaker, he fumed, incensed at the cruelty of the world. His bright future dashed against the rocks of necessity to be swallowed up by the deeps, receding and leaving nothing but scraps. Until love entered his life, and he found solace. His love’s sweet words dropped from silky lips, and he had forgotten the lessons of his childhood; he allowed himself to rise and rise until he fell, for where else was there to go?

The leaves had begun to fall just as he had. In those living things, great and small, was apparent the promise that although he might be tall and stand above all, he must eventually lose. And so he fled, swearing to nevermore walk down the grimy road, to never see the proud facades that hid rot and filth. He kicked the piles of leaves, his eyes gleaming, his mouth upturned, as he used his greatness to shatter the things which others might hold dear.

He learned after that; learned to hide his feelings, to not do what was necessary, but to do what was right — to consider others, to work for what was - _hah_ \- the greater good. He turned with tears in his eyes against those he knew, called upon his allies, and many fell. 

When he next came to ask for aid against another he had known, that tremble in his voice, that hesitancy in his tone, that relief in his step would be gone, for they had no place in what he was doing. Pain was a good teacher, and his heart broke as the missing failed to return, until he thought that he would scream and shout, until he did not want to live, because he did not deserve to live, because he had caused so much death.

Whatever he touched lay fallow, and whatever he turned his hand to went wrong. He could not be given power, for he would bring to ruin all. When a man who had never taken the route of what was right, only what was easy, came to him on bended knees to beg for aid, he saw the worst of himself and hated him for it. When those who had done his commands and fallen for it left naught but a babe with a lightning bolt scar, he hated himself for it, and mourned.

He delivered the babe away, as it is was a reminder of his failures, and when friends turned upon friends, it was a blow as great as any he had ever suffered. He had taken great delight in kicking the leaves in the grounds, as though their swirling could mend his broken thoughts, their eddied flights through the air echoing his tangled and twisted mind.

Time did not flow constant in this place, and his memories came near and fast, drowning him in his mistakes, in his failures.

The first living thing that ever appeared before him was strange. A child with the skin of a rotten leaf, it hissed, clearly having been diverted from its natural existence by a fell being, a thing of beauty perverted from its peace by a great and evil will. Its skin was scarred and scabbed, its eyes lidless and filled with vivid hatred, its very presence a reminder of what failure was. Unable to move, it lay there, sacrificed on the altar of human malice for a second longer of life, no matter how tortuous and empty, calling eternally to be reunited. He looked on with unmoving expression, finally able to see what his old student had done to himself in his mad quest.

Through the long wait down the endless and eternal moments, more of the scarred fragments of soul appeared. The next splinter to appear was scarred, its skin paper thin, the veins shining through. While the first one had had vivid yet unmoving eyes which expressed its hatred openly, the second ruined creature had long crooked fingers and moved faintly, staring at him with naked hunger. Its hands endlessly grasping, it repeatedly clutched again and again at him, as though attempting to seize his vitality. Even reduced to this, Tom still failed to understand that life could not be wrung out, that his soul could not be made to stretch membrane thin across eternity without snapping.

As the number of wrecks piled up across the repeating seconds, he grew ever more pensive. What sort of man willingly shed his being like leaves on an autumnal tree to cling to a farce of an existence - loveless, joyless, devoid of colour and warmth? But then hadn’t he done the same, clinging to life long after those he knew had ventured on? In his final moments of life, hadn’t he traded his arm for a few months of existence, just to further drive his charges towards death?

Such questions and deliberations circled him, the eye of a storm of regrets and suffering, the nexus of the fate of others - the Potters, their life traded for their son’s, the Longbottoms, their sanity traded for theirs. The Prewetts, spent fruitlessly to stem the rising tide of darkness, Fenwick and Bones, McKinnon and Meadows, all used in vain as the rot seeped in, all as he waited and feared to do what was necessary.

After he had exhausted the possible branches of fate, wondering what would have changed had he changed this, said that, encouraged them, protected her, done this, saved that, the endless procession of raw and beaten souls changed.

A mist envelops the landscape, clearing to reveal a wide, open space, bright and clean, a hall larger by far than the Great Hall, with a clear, domed glass ceiling. At its center was yet another shard of the Dark Lord that seemingly could never die, and the fulcrum of his great plan over the past eighteen years. His heart seemed to stop, the breath caught in his throat, for if he was here then either his plan had gone horribly wrong, or horribly right.

Harry drew near to the shuddering thing, his gaze holding revulsion but also pity. He spoke through his tightened chest, almost hesitantly.

“You cannot help”

Harry spun round, and Dumbledore was once again filled with aching sorrow over what he had put this brave young man, this wonderful boy through, but his heart was filled with a vicious joy, for Harry was full of vitality and life; he was alive. 

Harry told him that this place was King’s Cross, and his smile was pained, for he had not been able to make Harry’s house a home - for Harry, the place where he could go on and venture towards the next great adventure was the place where he could escape to Hogwarts. He led him to two seats by the nearest wall, and imparted the fact of life to Harry, led him to the conclusion of the vision he had shaped his actions in, revealed that Voldemort had, as all tyrants do, sown the seeds of his defeat, had prepared the ground on which he would be laid low.

He showed Harry the sordid and sorry tale of his life, his foolish hopes and ambitions, how Gellert Grindlewald had, as all tyrants do, sown the seeds of his defeat. He told of the slow and painful realisation that those who sought power should never be given it, that those who had greatness thrust upon them wore the mantle best.

And finally, it was time for Harry to return.

"I’ve got to go back, haven’t I?" 

"That is up to you." 

"I’ve got a choice?" 

"Oh yes." Dumbledore smiled at him. "We are in King’s Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to … let’s say … board a train." 

"And where would it take me?" 

"On," he said simply. The silence grew.

And then he was alone, waiting only for the last tortured remnant of Tom Riddle to come to the cottage, the station. As he waited, the fabric of the place reshaped itself, coalescing together and draining away, leaving only the suggestion of leaves. He laughed, stood up, checked that his boots were pointy enough, and began to walk towards the pile.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading my first story! Reviews welcome.


End file.
